The above image, would you believe, is titled “Glorious view of Mt. Fuji.”

The image of sex in the Edo Period is that is was more uninhibited than it is today and that there was a whole lot more of it. This idea is based in part on the erotic woodblock prints, known as shunga, by artists of the period such as Kitagawa Utamaro and Katsushika Hokusai.

But one thing many people have noticed about shunga is the treatment of women’s breasts. In contrast with the minute detail lavished on the engravings of genitals and pubic hair for both men and women, breasts are often given little attention. The nipples are not colored and sometimes not even drawn in. What gives? Were men back then just not interested in waps?

News Post Seven asked Yoshihiko Shirakawa, an expert in ukiyoe woodblock prints with a deep knowledge of shunga, what was up with that.

“It appears that men of the Edo period considered breast to be a tool for child rearing,” he says. “They were not a sexualized part of the body. In shunga from the early Edo Period, men and women were depicted with largely similar chests. From the point of view of the artists, breasts really didn’t seem to matter.”

Breasts? What breasts?

Breasts? What breasts?

So early shunga suggest that a grown man being interested in breasts was considered childish. Moreover, you won’t see any G-cups or H-cups in shunga. At most, you might find a B-cup or in rare cases, a C. In Edo times, being top heavy doesn’t seem to have been the fashion.

From the middle of the Edo Period, we begin to see some shunga that show breasts. However, there were often scenes where a mother was breastfeeding an infant while the man penetrates her with his fingers or hands, his focus only on the lower half of her body. This is also a reflection of Edo culture.

Don't mind me, honey. Just do what you're doing.

Don’t mind me, honey. Just do what you’re doing.

Says Shirakawa, “The fact that the detail is on the genitals or the penetration shows the attention to the needs of the viewer.”

It can’t be denied, though, that caressing the breast is sexually exciting. Some shunga artists, such as Kitagawa Utamaro, Suzuki Harunobu and their disciples, managed to convey this in their work, even if the prevailing view was that an interests in breasts was childish.

Utamaro in particular had difficulty concealing his fondness for breasts. He often depicted prostitutes boldly baring their chests or Kintaro, a legendary child taken in by a mountain witch, with his bare-chested adoptive mother. Showing the prostitutes gave the pictures an obscene touch, while the pictures of Kintaro and the witch racily mixed the mother/son and lover relationships.

But maybe it’s not as simple as saying that most men during the Edo Period weren’t aware of breasts’ sexual component. In shunga depicting sexual positions where the man is shown eagerly taking a breast in his mouth, the woman is shown with an expression of ecstasy on her face.

Biting on a cloth equals ecstasy in the shunga world.

Biting on a cloth equals ecstasy in the shunga world.

“Isoda Koryusai, a painter in the Harunobu school, has a piece called Twelve Bouts in the Way of Love. A lover is shown taking a prostitute from behind while firmly grasping her nipple. The prostitute is murmuring, ‘That’s so good.’ This shows that even for a pro, the unexpectedness of a man caressing the breast added another level of pleasure,” says Shirakawa.

I guess some things really don’t change.

Source: News Post Seven
Images: Wikicommons, Brooklyn Museum, City of Lugano, Scholten Japanese Art